


Pot Calling Kettle

by Teyke



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Realities, Clockwork - Freeform, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, M/M, Steampunk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-04 12:29:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3067871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teyke/pseuds/Teyke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another day, another fight, another accidental trip to some messed-up alternate reality. Tony and Steve save the day and save each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pot Calling Kettle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lets_call_me_Lily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lets_call_me_Lily/gifts).



> I hope that this fic contains everything you wanted, and that you’ve a happy New Years day to enjoy it on :D
> 
> Many thanks to my beta, runningondreams! All errors and nonsense remaining are, of course, solely my own fault.

 “Stark, watch out!” he hears Steve yell, and then, well, that’s the last he hears for a while.

* * *

He wakes up to find himself staring at an extremely fine ass – pert, muscled, rippling in all the right ways – not such an unusual occurrence, when you’re Tony Stark.  Sadly, the hanging upside down part isn’t really all that new either, or the jostling around as his finely-assed teammate sprints down an alleyway and jumps a crumbling brick wall. The fight against the giant mecha-spider has not gone well in his hopefully-brief absence, then.

“Let me down,” Tony demands, not flailing because he _has_ learned something about teamwork over the past few years – and also about being rescued, and how to best avoid initiating recapture of both himself and his rescuer or, and he much prefers when this is the case, his rescuee.

“Shh,” says Steve, jumping another wall. Tony faceplants into his ass.

“Jesus, be less perky,” he mutters, clapping a hand over his nose. Everything is too heavy – he’s wearing the suit, but... something knocked out the power source. Something? His chest feels cold.

“I think we lost them,” says Steve, still keeping his voice low. He slings Tony back over his shoulder like the armour weighs nothing instead of a good four-twenty pounds, and Tony gets to admire the way his arm muscles ripple. God, he could watch Steve move all day, if only he weren’t propped up against a wall in what is a really a suspiciously clean alley. He’s pretty sure New York alleys aren’t supposed to sparkle like this.

Also, there’s an enormous hole in his chest plate. It’s mostly just a chest... ring, now. Miraculously, the undersuit hasn’t even been singed; the arc reactor in his chest is also, thankfully, fine. The suit’s is toast.

“What _happened?_ ” Tony asks. It comes out more like ‘wuhh hahhenn’ because Steve claps a hand over his mouth – on reflex; he gives Tony a chagrined look and takes his hand back when Tony glares indignantly.

“Sorry.” Steve’s keeping his voice low, not whispering. “Keep it down. What happened was you weren’t paying attention.”

“I was covering your ass,” Tony snipes back. Quietly.

“You were _being_ an ass and showboating,” says Steve, and then they glare at each other for the rest of the time it takes them to get the dead weight that is most of the armour off of him. He keeps the gauntlets, and the boots. The redundancy wiring through the undersuit will let him run those off of the arc reactor in his chest, and there’s no point in giving up valuable weapons and transport. Also, since he _is_ wearing the undersuit, if he takes the boots off he'll be left running around in its little booties.

They stack the pieces of the armour in the corner behind them. The alleyway that Steve’s tucked them into is closed in on one end by a brick wall – both buildings beside them are also brick – and the view onto the street is blocked by a dumpster that looks like a dumpster, rings of aluminum like a dumpster, but doesn’t _smell_ like a dumpster, which is both a relief and highly unnerving.

“Right,” says Tony, when he’s mobile again. With some caution – because he _has_ listened in training, at least sometimes, thanks – he pops his head over the top of the dumpster to take a look. “What h- _ell.”_

Trotting past the mouth of the alley, with uncanny silence, goes a perfectly matched pair of mechanical horses, pulling a carriage that looks like it was spawned from the pages of the same clockwork horror novel as its equine locomotors. Sitting on top is a guy in a black velvet coat with a cap. His face is very pallid. There is something wrong with it.

Tony ducks back down before he can be seen, and grabs Steve’s arm – not too hard. Always have to be careful of that, in the armour, even with Steve. _“What the hell?”_

“We’re not in Kansas anymore,” says Steve, dry as dust. 

* * *

They’re not in the United States, either. This is apparently London. “I saw Big Ben, at least,” says Steve with a frown. “Though it could’ve been a replica. I didn’t have a lot of time to look.”

There was no time to look because apparently they’d been immediately noticed as _human_ when Steve had expressed concern over Tony in his unconscious state. Tony wants to say something smug about Steve being worried, but actually Steve still has a pinched line between his eyebrows as he relates this, so Tony leaves it alone. See? Tact. Team-building. Also, pre-occupation with _holy shit murderous clockwork robots_ and also _I hate magic_.

“They’re all robots,” says Steve with a frown. “That’s why their faces don’t look right. Can you do something with that?”

“Uh – in a word: no.”

Steve blinks at him.

“They’re not robots,” Tony explains, trying for patience. It’s a bad idea to facepalm when he’s wearing the gauntlets, anyway. He distracts himself by carefully tucking his armour away in the not-a-dumpster, which is mostly empty save a scattering of broken bits of copper machinery and hopefully won’t be emptied again anytime soon. “Clockwork, mechanical moving parts, they’re too large and too fragile to make something _intelligent_ and fit it into the space of one of those things. So, either they’re a hive-mind – and if you suggest we have clockwork alien bees coming after us I might scream, Rogers – or it’s magic.” He makes a face. “I _hate_ magic.”

“Can’t say I like it too much either,” Steve mutters, rubbing at his shoulder in a way that indicates he’d wrenched it earlier, or maybe had it pulverized, because when you were a super-soldier who could bounce back from everything crippling injuries became not such a big deal. “Okay. Even if they’re magic, they might still have some way to get home.”

Tony sighs, because he’s cobbled up magical artefacts to do things before, but it’s –

\- well, it’s fucking _magic_. “Right.”

“They’re all blank,” says Steve, determined – determinedly not-blank, unfortunately. Tony tells the cynic’s voice in his head to shut up. “We’ll just have to be blank, too.”

* * *

They get made before they’ve even gone three blocks. Whatever these things are, playing at being human, their faces are set unnaturally, in a way that neither Steve nor Tony can hope to imitate properly. It’s a clockwork woman that steps out to confront them. Her skirts are elegantly done up in that weird style that has padding out on her butt to make it... larger? Grotesquely so, if that _is_ the case; he’ll never understand what they were thinking. She’s wearing a large hat with fruit on it, which has a half-veil of mesh that hangs down to just above her mouth. The set of her face is wooden. Wrong. It hints at gleaming bronze gears beneath.

It looks almost exactly like Natasha, except for the blank, murderous rage in its eyes. And the ridiculous costume.

“You are malfunctioning,” she says in a perfectly polished upper-crust London accent, and he senses Steve sliding subtly into combat mode – he was fighting grooms and horsemen and maids before, he said, their eyes all blank and horrible. (He didn’t say that last part, but Tony knows.) Against their ordinary citizens, he’d elected to beat a retreat – and, okay, so Tony wasn’t out cold anymore. But this is a Natasha clockwork horror. They are so fucked. “You will follow me.”

One eye closes beneath the veil, and opens. Tony – stares. Blankly. Then tries to capture the feeling and hold onto it.

“Steve,” he mutters, trying not to move his mouth. The clockwork things look so weird when they move their mouths. Some of them don’t have skin covering their entire faces – those ones look _really_ weird.

“Yeah, I see it,” Steve says back, _sotto voice_ , and when Tony turns his head to look at him, his face is blank, too. He speaks and is blank enough to make Tony shiver. “We will comply.”

* * *

They follow Natasha – _please let it be Natasha,_ a _Natasha, any Natasha not a murderous clockwork thing –_ to an omninously pleasant-looking townhouse. Natasha sweeps in through the door – pulled back by clockwork, although at least it’s not a clockwork butler – and waits imperiously for them to follow before pulling the lever to have the door groan shut again. Then she pulls a very spikey-looking stick from the pinnaple in her hat and throws it at the door – it lands with a _shwing_ , vibrating in the thick oak. Her face has transformed into very human rage. “Are you _touched in the head?”_

“Oh thank god,” says Tony. 

She crosses over to them in two swift strides, stepping up on her toes to press a kiss to each of their cheeks – Tony first, and he flinches back violently. She gives him a sad smile as she steps back. “How did you escape? More of your inventions, Anthony?”

Tony shares a glance with Steve. “Ah,” Steve says awkwardly.

* * *

By the time they’ve finished their explanation, Natasha looks like she has a headache. Fortunately, Tony is used to giving people headaches; if it weren’t Natasha he thinks it would probably be comforting. Actually, in a strange way, it _is_ comforting, because he’s pretty sure she’s saving the rest of the needles in her fruit-hat for the clockwork things.

“I think,” Natasha says, “we should continue this conversation in the presence of Dr. Banner.”

Tony perks up at this. Bruce is here? That’s good. Even if he’s a hundred years back in time, or a wizard, Bruce is brilliant in any form.

Natasha sweeps ahead of them, into a small library, and removes a book from one of the shelves. There is a grinding of brick, and that bookcase swings open, revealing a long, uncomfortably narrow staircase. Tony nearly trips three times on the way down – at the third, Steve has to grab his arm to prevent him from tumbling head-over-heels into Natasha, who, of course, is having no trouble at all, despite her skirts not really _fitting_ in the space allotted. 

“I’m _fine_ ,” Tony mutters, glaring ahead in the dark when Steve doesn’t remove his hand. “I’m – ” _being reached for by an enormous clockwork claw,_ he doesn’t say; it comes out more like, “shit, _duck!”_ except that it doesn’t, because Steve has shoved him back and stepped in front of him with the shield held high. He’s already moving to counter-attack, in fact –

“Steve, no!” cry three different voices. Only two of them have London accents. Steve freezes.

“God _damn_ it _,”_ says Tony, staring. “I’m a fucking wizard? _Really?”_   And annoyingly, maybe he should have expected that: if clockwork wizardry replaced science in this world, of _course_ he’d be brilliant at it. 

The metal claw, frozen overtop of Steve’s shield, rotates about by one-twenty-degrees – curious, confused. Massive and enormous compared to DUM-E back home: Tony’s eyes follow the lines of copper and brass, the gears and intricate little parts, and this version... easily takes up a full story-and-a-half: Tony can see bits of him installed through the floor and ceiling. There is still no way that _clockwork_ could fit in this space and provide enough computing power to run an AI.

A drooping AI. Tony’s hurt his feelings. Normally he would – well, normally DUM-E would have it coming, but, here they are, in magical clockwork horror land, but there’s still this idiot, staring at him with – Tony swallows and says, “Good to see you again, buddy.”

The arm descends gently, raising one half of the claw up to his face, and then rises out of the way.

“Steve,” says another voice – the third voice. Now it’s disbelieving. “Anthony.” Tony looks past DUM-E’s golden claw – maybe blinking over-damp eyes a few more times, but that’s okay, it’s all lamps down here and no proper light, no one to see. Bruce is standing there in a waistcoat and with a fussy English accent and looking downright astonished. “You escaped?”

Tony glances at Steve, and then up at DUM-E. “Ah,” he says awkwardly.

* * *

Bruce seems a bit bemused by Tony’s insistence that all this clockwork stuff is really magic, not science. Tony remains bemused by Bruce’s waistcoat and considers turnabout fair play. DUM-E, pest that he is in any world, keeps poking his claw in Tony’s face as he’s trying to work out how what Bruce has been working on might actually _work_ , until after the third time Tony has to bat him out of the way he just keeps his hand on DUM-E’s arm. If it means he has to work one-handed, well, it keeps DUM-E from fidgeting.

“It shouldn’t have any effect on DUM-E and U,” says Bruce, nodding to both of the clockwork robots. U is being shy, almost suspicious, and hiding in a corner. “Anthony developed their design long before these aliens appeared – they’re similar in appearance and form, but not in origin. When our world separates from the invaders’, they will remain here.”

“And it’s origin that matters,” Tony mutters, mostly in complaint, because really, _magic_. Quantum overlap doesn’t do much to explain how somebody managed to overlay Clockwork London England on Ye Old Fashioned London England, fusing the two worlds together.

“Yes, entirely. But without the power source...”

“Right, okay, I get what you were doing,” says Tony. “Fortunately – ” he taps his fingers against his chest, “ – not a problem for _me_. Let me check your power calculations. And that shielding.”

Across the room, Natasha and Steve are talking. Tony keeps an eye on them – not because he doesn’t trust Steve to take care of himself, but... well, Natasha’s clockwork impersonation was really, uncannily good. And after all this time – Steve jumps in the way, too often. So Tony jumps in the way in return, or at least keeps a camera peeled. Right now he doesn’t have any cameras, though.

“That much energy?” Bruce murmurs, astonished, when Tony tells him what the arc reactor can output, and then it’s Tony’s turn to explain his type of science. It’s... actually not as fun as he would have thought, after the first minute or so. He misses his Bruce; it’s not that this one doesn’t understand just as quickly as his Bruce, but his Bruce would already _know_. Having magic explained like science is a lot less annoying than being confronted with a stuck-up sorcerer, but trying to explain science - _basic_ science - to Bruce is just wrong.

“We thought we’d need Thor for it,” says Bruce. “That’s what Anthony was doing when he got captured. Went off alone, convinced he could work it out – Steve went after him, of course.”

“Of course I did,” says Steve, coming over; Natasha has vanished back upstairs. “What happened to Thor?”

“Whatever brought the clockwork to life took him down first,” says a voice from the stairs. Clint. Ah, Tony thinks. He and Natasha are trading off watches. “They knew he’d be the biggest threat.”

“Not anymore,” says Tony with a flourish at the mess of wiring he and Bruce have cobbled together. “All we need to do is hook the arc reactor up to this – send the power up through your heavy-duty lightning rod – ”

“It’s not a lightning rod,” Bruce says patiently, because technically it’s some pseudo-science thing that maybe Tony doesn’t fully understand, because math doesn’t work the way Bruce seems to think it does.

“Whatever. Signal goes out, worlds disentangle and the clockwork horrors vanish.”

“Impressive,” says Clint. His English accent is impressive. Really, Tony can expect it from Natasha, and even Bruce-in-a-waistcoat, but _Clint?_

“Yup. Won’t send us home, though.” Probably. Tony considers that. But they came here through a completely different method of travel, and there’s no sign of New York around here.

“Natasha said that Thor could probably get us home,” says Steve, looking to both Bruce and Clint for confirmation. It’s probably true – Thor managed to get that herd of extra-planar alien cats sent home last year before they could rampage beyond Yellowstone Park’s borders. But Clint’s making a face –

“We’ve had otherworldly visitors before,” says Bruce, nodding confirmation. He’s also... amused, and not quite hiding it. Tony stares hard at him. “They were from the year 1268, in their world. Sir Clinton had a very nice bow, and very good aim.”

“He got a lucky shot,” Clint mutters grouchily. “Nothing more. Are you going to complete your work of mad science or not?”

Steve frowns. “How long will the reactor need to be hooked up to the circuit?”

Tony glances at Bruce – who opens his mouth to speak, and then shuts it in surprise, frowning at Tony. “Ah,” Tony says awkwardly.

* * *

“A hand crank,” says Steve. He looks horrified.

It’s a strangely irritating question. It’ll _work_ , and that’s what matters. That’s all that can matter. “I used to run it off of a car battery, it’ll be fine,” Tony snaps. “Just don’t stop cranking when your super-muscles get tired.”

Steve gets that pinched look that he gets whenever he’s reminded about the less happy aspects of his teammates’ pasts. “I’m just saying it looks flimsy.”

“This is clockwork-horror-unhappy-ville, the other options aren’t any better, and I’m not using a goddamn wound spring.”

“Are you sure – ”

“Well, if it breaks then that’s just what I get for destroying the suit’s reactor _showboating_ ,” barks Tony.

The candles suck all the air out of the basement. It’s dim and claustrophobic down here. None of that is the reason why he’s feeling so breathless, but – it’s Steve. Steve, looking at him with downcast eyes.

“I’m going to go check with Natasha upstairs,” says Clint, and beats a hasty retreat. Bruce doesn’t have such an excuse, but he flees to the far side of the basement anyway.

“You weren’t showboating,” says Steve in a low voice, after they’ve stared at each other for several seconds longer. “If you hadn’t gotten in the way of that beam it’d have hit me.”

Tony scoffs. “I remember that bit.” He remembers angles and the realization that Steve would never get enough of himself behind the shield or even out of the way. A blocking target – say, the armour – closer to the point of origin, however, could provide a far more effective shield. It was simple geometry.

Steve blinks. “I thought you didn’t remember what happened. You were concussed.” He reaches forward, large fingers prodding gently at the bump on Tony’s skull. “You kept asking what happened – ”

“New York to gothic London, of course I asked what happened, I’m not _concussed_.”

“You should take better care of your brain,” says Steve primly, and his hands move down to clasp Tony’s shoulders. “It’s important. You’re important.”

“Well, you’re going to get to take personal care of my heart for about fifteen minutes,” says Tony wryly, lightly, like this most important thing in the world means nothing at all. “Up to the job, Captain?”

“Always,” says Steve, and he says it like it means everything.

* * *

In the end it takes them closer to twenty minutes – he and Bruce have to solve a brief problem with energy build-up in Bruce’s bulky lightning rod of doom – but Steve’s hands never falter, never turn the crank too fast or too slow; it’s one steady rhythm that keeps the magnet going as well as his pacemaker, not troubling him with arrhythmic beats. Just: _th-thump, th-thump, th-thump_.

Lightning lances up the coils, past copper gears and over golden wires, through tubes filled with gasses that flare and spark. Tony stares even as his hands keep moving, adjusting the reactor’s energy output – this isn’t how electricity behaves. This world is different. He’s probably lucky the reactor works at all.

Outside, thunder breaks. DUM-E and U shudder, withdrawing into themselves. Lightning lashes back down the copper piping along the walls as their insulation fails. Behind Steve it crackles brightest – “Cap, watch out!” Tony yells, his hand closing on Steve’s shoulder to pull him out of the way, away from the crank. It's like trying to lift Mjolnir; Steve doesn't budge, _won't_ budge, and memory hits him like _déjà vu_. The flash of light, on the other hand, hits more like a brick.

* * *

Fortunately they reappear in the middle of New York, so it only takes Thor about a minute to fly over to the Tower, retrieve one of Tony’s spare arc reactors, and return to install it in his chest. Steve props Tony up – it’s hard enough to breathe, harder still when flat on his back – and grips his hand, muttering reassurances at him until Tony snaps at him to, “Shut up, Rogers, not your damn fault this time, should’ve known it would – send us back – ” except that he’s mostly too busy gasping for breath to make it stick. He really should have known. There’s no such thing as co-incidences in their line of work; of _course_ the giant mecha-spider was clock-work related, and thus the method by which they’d been transported. At least their teammates had pounded the giant mecha-clockwork-spider to pieces in the interim. And, hopefully, by assisting that other world, they may have headed off a clockwork invasion of their own. He does, however, regret that his armour was left behind. When Thor gets back, maybe they can... can... 

By the time Thor returns, Tony’s vision is going grey. It would take at least a half hour for the metal shards in his heart to be in serious danger of shifting, but after so many years his heart just isn’t strong enough to keep up a steady beat on its own. The erratic, too-weak pulse of blood through his veins makes it difficult to breathe; his head slumps against Steve’s chest.

The _click_ as Natasha fits the backup reactor in is music to his ears.

“Oh, thank god,” says Steve.

“You’re telling me,” says Tony. He lets himself rest against Steve for a minute longer as his vision begins to clear.

“You’re too damn reckless.”

“You’re one to talk,” Tony says, pointedly flipping his hand at Steve’s other arm, the one not propping Tony up. He’s got a lovely Lichtenberg figure peeking out from the edge of his shirt-sleeve and tracing down his bare wrist, although with his healing factor it’ll fade within hours. It won’t even scar. “You giant hypocrite.”

“Yeah, well.” Steve clears his throat. “All’s well that ends well.”

Tony grins up at him, and decides to stay leaning against him for a while longer.


End file.
